Try the H word (Hero)

I wasn't even trying to reach the dude. I was just calling his office to leave a message with his secretary.

Next thing you know, I'm on the phone with a boyhood idol and trying not to gush like a schoolgirl stuck in an elevator with Brad Pitt.

I called Earl Graves' New York office a couple of weeks ago so his secretary could relay a message to the founder and retired publisher of Black Enterprise magazine: "Thanks" for standing up against misogyny, racism and vileness.

Graves recently pulled the plug -- I mean he literally went onstage and pulled the plug -- on foul-mouthed comic and Stepin Fetchit spiritual descendant Eddie Griffin at an event in Florida.

In doing so, Graves struck a blow for decency and became a hero to all who are sick of comedians who rend the moral fabric of society with every expletive spewed.

"We had already told him that wouldn't be tolerated," Graves told me when I asked about the incident at the Doral Golf Resort and Spa in Miami at his 14th annual Black Enterprise/ Pepsi Golf & Tennis Challenge.

"We had 1,200 people there. It wasn't just about one comedian. It was about anyone who disrespects our race that way.

"I told him he was going to get his money" despite his show being cut short, Graves said.

Griffin, who, regrettably, is black, had gone onstage and started tossing out the N-word, the F-bomb and even the queen mother -- wink, wink -- of profanity like Santa Claus tossing lollipops at the Christmas parade.

Graves reportedly received a standing ovation when he axed the award-winning comic in mid-act.

Award-winning?

Yep. Even though Griffin is about as funny as genital warts, he received an award -- "The Most Embarrassing Negro" award bestowed by "Boon-docks" cartoonist Aaron McGruder.

What a well-deserved dishonor.

His next award will probably be from the Ku Klux Klan for "Meritorious Service in the Perpetuation of Racist and Idiotic Stereotypes."

Griffin, you may recall -- if you're lucky, you won't -- has a routine about the civil rights movement marches of the 1960s in which he lambastes Dr. King as a "roundheaded" expletive who must have been crazy to think Griffin would march anywhere in the heat.

Oy. Graves pulled the plug on him when he started "joking" about how Michael Vick was going to prison for abusing dogs while O.J. killed a white woman -- although "woman" isn't the word he used -- and got away.

Wow, what a laugh riot.

Graves, 72, seems to be on a one-man crusade to, as he told me, "take back our race" from people like Griffin and restore some balance and self-respect.

That's a crusade we should all join.

There's a danger of imbuing Eddie Griffin the individual with too much significance. He has none. In terms of social relevance, the dude makes Michael Jordan look like Malcolm X.

By being booted off the stage in Florida, though, there's a chance that he will become famous as the first victim in the cultural war against traitors who profit by demeaning our race.